| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. |
| She alone was sad and insignificant: she had no share in anything; she might go or stay; she might be in the midst of their noise, or retreat from it to the solitude of the East room, without being seen or missed. She could almost think anything would have been preferable to this. -- Fanny Price at her most Eeyore-ish in Mansfield Park |
CMP#129 About the East Room
Edmund and Fanny in the East room Our heroine Fanny is perplexed and distressed. She needs time alone for reflection so she goes to a quiet room at Mansfield called the East room. But before we get to those internal deliberations, Austen pauses to describe the contents of the East room in a way that she perhaps never does for any other room in her novels. She also explains how Fanny came to use it as her own private day-room, even though Aunt Norris will not allow the comfort of a fire. We learn what having this room means to Fanny. (The relevant excerpt is posted at the end of this blog for anyone wanting a refresher).
The East room is Fanny's refuge, her “nest of comforts,” even though it’s chilly and she has only battered school-room chairs to sit in and it’s decorated with drawings and furniture “too ill done for the drawing-room.” Here she keeps objects of sentimental value, like a sketch from her seafaring brother. She has her geraniums and her books. Fanny is a collector of books and she likes reading. As she pacing and thinking, Edmund visits her, letting her know he will relent and join the others in putting on a play, He and Fanny both know Sir Thomas would disapprove. Edmund awkwardly tries to segue out of the uncomfortable disagreement by talking about her books: “[Y]ou will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?”
He babbles nervously: “And here are Crabbe’s Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense… and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.” And poof! he’s out the door, down the stairs and down the hill to Mary Crawford at the parsonage...
The East room is Fanny's refuge, her “nest of comforts,” even though it’s chilly and she has only battered school-room chairs to sit in and it’s decorated with drawings and furniture “too ill done for the drawing-room.” Here she keeps objects of sentimental value, like a sketch from her seafaring brother. She has her geraniums and her books. Fanny is a collector of books and she likes reading. As she pacing and thinking, Edmund visits her, letting her know he will relent and join the others in putting on a play, He and Fanny both know Sir Thomas would disapprove. Edmund awkwardly tries to segue out of the uncomfortable disagreement by talking about her books: “[Y]ou will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?”
He babbles nervously: “And here are Crabbe’s Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense… and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.” And poof! he’s out the door, down the stairs and down the hill to Mary Crawford at the parsonage...
Chinese standard bearer by William Alexander, official draftsman for McCartney's visit to China When Fanny first arrived at Mansfield Park as a frightened child, she had “never heard of Asia Minor.” Now she is reading a “great book:” the Embassy to China, Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During His Embassy to the Emperor Chʻien-lung, 1793-1794.
Edmund hopes the descriptions of the fabled, the almost mythical Orient in The Embassy will transport Fanny far, far away, so she'll have something more consequential to think about than his about-face on the propriety of private theatricals. Although on this occasion the book did not divert Fanny from her concerns and heartache, the descriptions of the East room have fired the imaginations of Austen scholars. As Kirstyn Leuner puts it: "Fanny Price’s East room in the Bertram estate attracts not only characters in Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park to knock on its door and peer inside, but literary scholars as well." While “there was no reading, no China, no composure for Fanny," contemplation of the East room has sent scholars on a quest for meaning, and lo, they return, not with tea and silk and spices, but with rich and subtle symbolism.
One scholar has drawn parallels between the power struggle between Fanny Price and the Bertrams and Lord McCartney’s negotiations with the Chinese emperor. Others see the room as the British Empire in microcosm. “Intellectual history, material history that combines the social and the aesthetic, and Britain’s colonial geopolitical history coalesce in Fanny Price’s East room…. Fanny’s belongings in the East room [include objects] enabled by colonial enterprise.” The East room is compared to an art gallery or the British Museum and Fanny to a curator.
Well, any room in a prosperous gentleman’s house is going to include material objects which are the products of imperialism, as well as chinoiserie of all kinds. I'd expect you'd find more of these objects in any room in the house other than the old school-room, though.
Another scholar agrees: "Fanny’s acquisition of more space, her taking over of what they call the ‘East room’, might encode the larger territorial expansion of British land possessions." Or, it might not.
Edmund hopes the descriptions of the fabled, the almost mythical Orient in The Embassy will transport Fanny far, far away, so she'll have something more consequential to think about than his about-face on the propriety of private theatricals. Although on this occasion the book did not divert Fanny from her concerns and heartache, the descriptions of the East room have fired the imaginations of Austen scholars. As Kirstyn Leuner puts it: "Fanny Price’s East room in the Bertram estate attracts not only characters in Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park to knock on its door and peer inside, but literary scholars as well." While “there was no reading, no China, no composure for Fanny," contemplation of the East room has sent scholars on a quest for meaning, and lo, they return, not with tea and silk and spices, but with rich and subtle symbolism.
One scholar has drawn parallels between the power struggle between Fanny Price and the Bertrams and Lord McCartney’s negotiations with the Chinese emperor. Others see the room as the British Empire in microcosm. “Intellectual history, material history that combines the social and the aesthetic, and Britain’s colonial geopolitical history coalesce in Fanny Price’s East room…. Fanny’s belongings in the East room [include objects] enabled by colonial enterprise.” The East room is compared to an art gallery or the British Museum and Fanny to a curator.
Well, any room in a prosperous gentleman’s house is going to include material objects which are the products of imperialism, as well as chinoiserie of all kinds. I'd expect you'd find more of these objects in any room in the house other than the old school-room, though.
Another scholar agrees: "Fanny’s acquisition of more space, her taking over of what they call the ‘East room’, might encode the larger territorial expansion of British land possessions." Or, it might not.
| East is East and West is West But surely, the “East” in “East room” is significant? One scholar opines that Fanny’s room is “appropriately called the East Room” because it conjures “a growing global awareness.” It draws our thoughts toward the East, where the East India Company clippers plied the waves between Canton and Madras and Calcutta before returning to the docks of London. Another scholar points out that the "east has significant Christian resonances" as the Star of Bethlehem appeared in the east. Another scholar recognizes that if the East Room represents British expansion and Fanny colonizes it, oops, that's a little problematic: "That the taking over of new territory (by Fanny, by Sir Thomas and his class) happens ‘so naturally’ would imply no opposition to these acts of geographical expansion, which of course belies historical facts regarding the colonies at this time..." Well, I think we can find a more prosaic reason for the name of the room. I can assure you that the East room is called the East room because it faces east. Why am I so certain? Because it was the school-room. Once the gentry stopped living in stone castles and stopped worrying about how to fend off marauders, they started building mansions and were able to think about which way the windows faced, or the “aspect,” in their home designs. Rooms that faced east got the morning light. The Gentleman’s House, published in Victorian times, pays a lot of attention to “aspect.” In describing school-rooms, the author advises: “The light ought to be abundant, for various educational reasons.” A description of an Irish mansion specifies that the “Gentleman’s room” —that is, the room men used for business, going over their books, meeting with their bailiff and steward— “is lighted from the North and East.” We recall that soon after Lady Catherine de Burgh enters the Bennet’s parlour, she announces: “This must be a most inconvenient sitting-room for the evening in summer: the windows are full west.” The “aspect” of the East Room is so favourable that it stays tolerably warm without a fire, thanks to passive solar heating. |  I have spent some time in classrooms in China. The architect of the school where I taught designed the building to take advantage of natural light. The school was built around an open courtyard, not for aesthetic reasons, but so the corridors had windows. The outer walls of the classrooms had windows and clerestory windows ran along the tops of the interior walls. No artificial light needed. incidentally, just as Fanny did not have a fire, the college radiators never made it past a feeble lukewarm in the winter. If you put your hands directly on them, you might sense some warmth. The students and I wore our coats, and sometimes gloves, in class. More about my time in China if you click the subject "China" at upper right. |
 |  excerpt from The Gentleman's House, a Victorian guide to home design, reminding people about the motion of the sun |
The East room doesn't look too shabby in this Brock illustration. What happens in the East room, stays in the East room
We know that Fanny uses the East room for her private sitting-room because her own bedroom is too small. But look at the East room from the point of view of a writer. Consider for a moment the needs of the plot. What happens in the East room? It hosts a number of private—and important—conversations between Fanny and Edmund, Fanny and Mary Crawford, and Fanny and Sir Thomas. And it also hosts a rehearsal of a love-scene between Mary and Edmund, with Fanny as unwilling looker-on, one of the many scenes in which Austen sets up our heroine so we can watch her being tortured.
Could any of these scenes take place anywhere else? Outside, possibly, in the shrubbery, if the weather was warm enough and it wasn't raining. Fanny does have several important conversations outdoors, away from the servants and everyone else. Can Fanny entertain Edmund in her poky little bedroom? No, because although they grew up like brother and sister, she is going to marry him later. It’s not proper. Could she have had these conversations down in the sitting room? No, in any of the downstairs rooms, the conversations might be overheard or broken in upon. Once, Fanny places a conversation between (the adult) Edmund and Fanny on the staircase going up to the second floor, “and the appearance of a housemaid prevented any farther conversation.” That conversation is deliberately broken off by Austen.
Mary specifically seeks out Fanny in the East room to go through her part in the play before the evening rehearsal with Edmund, in front of all the others. Later in the novel, Fanny stays in the breakfast room, hoping to avoid a conversation with Mary before she leaves Mansfield, but "Miss Crawford was not the slave of opportunity." She steers Fanny up to the East room.
Without the East room, Fanny would have to run out to the shrubbery every time she needed to have a private word with someone. Or Edmund would need to give her the gift of a necklace on the stairway or, heaven forbid, in the sitting-room in front of Aunt Norris and you know how that would have gone.
Instead, we learn in Chapter 16 that Fanny had, for some time although it hadn’t been mentioned yet, been using the East Room for her private sanctuary. The narrative passage is a bit of backstory, but also takes us into Fanny's inner feelings and thoughts.
That’s why the East Room comes into the novel—it is necessary for plot purposes.
When you ask yourself, why does Austen do such-and-so? or in this case, what's the big deal with the East room? You can start by asking yourself, what would have happened if this wasn't in the novel? And in the case of the East room, it would have meant Fanny had no indoor space where she could have a private conversation or even have a moment to herself. A commentator on the “Reading Jane Austen” podcast remarked: "I experienced the introduction of the East Room in Chapter 16 as a real turning point, because that is where you get the first extended section of Fanny’s internal deliberations. And it comes right after Mrs. Norris’s insult in the chapter before—just when a reader would want to know how Fanny survives in such an environment."
Whether the East room means more—whether it's symbolic of Fanny's solitude, or of her growing independence, or of the contemplative life of a nun, or a simulacrum of Empire, colonized by Fanny, I will leave to others. But I think analysis of the East room might start with the basic facts I've mentioned here.
We know that Fanny uses the East room for her private sitting-room because her own bedroom is too small. But look at the East room from the point of view of a writer. Consider for a moment the needs of the plot. What happens in the East room? It hosts a number of private—and important—conversations between Fanny and Edmund, Fanny and Mary Crawford, and Fanny and Sir Thomas. And it also hosts a rehearsal of a love-scene between Mary and Edmund, with Fanny as unwilling looker-on, one of the many scenes in which Austen sets up our heroine so we can watch her being tortured.
Could any of these scenes take place anywhere else? Outside, possibly, in the shrubbery, if the weather was warm enough and it wasn't raining. Fanny does have several important conversations outdoors, away from the servants and everyone else. Can Fanny entertain Edmund in her poky little bedroom? No, because although they grew up like brother and sister, she is going to marry him later. It’s not proper. Could she have had these conversations down in the sitting room? No, in any of the downstairs rooms, the conversations might be overheard or broken in upon. Once, Fanny places a conversation between (the adult) Edmund and Fanny on the staircase going up to the second floor, “and the appearance of a housemaid prevented any farther conversation.” That conversation is deliberately broken off by Austen.
Mary specifically seeks out Fanny in the East room to go through her part in the play before the evening rehearsal with Edmund, in front of all the others. Later in the novel, Fanny stays in the breakfast room, hoping to avoid a conversation with Mary before she leaves Mansfield, but "Miss Crawford was not the slave of opportunity." She steers Fanny up to the East room.
Without the East room, Fanny would have to run out to the shrubbery every time she needed to have a private word with someone. Or Edmund would need to give her the gift of a necklace on the stairway or, heaven forbid, in the sitting-room in front of Aunt Norris and you know how that would have gone.
Instead, we learn in Chapter 16 that Fanny had, for some time although it hadn’t been mentioned yet, been using the East Room for her private sanctuary. The narrative passage is a bit of backstory, but also takes us into Fanny's inner feelings and thoughts.
That’s why the East Room comes into the novel—it is necessary for plot purposes.
When you ask yourself, why does Austen do such-and-so? or in this case, what's the big deal with the East room? You can start by asking yourself, what would have happened if this wasn't in the novel? And in the case of the East room, it would have meant Fanny had no indoor space where she could have a private conversation or even have a moment to herself. A commentator on the “Reading Jane Austen” podcast remarked: "I experienced the introduction of the East Room in Chapter 16 as a real turning point, because that is where you get the first extended section of Fanny’s internal deliberations. And it comes right after Mrs. Norris’s insult in the chapter before—just when a reader would want to know how Fanny survives in such an environment."
Whether the East room means more—whether it's symbolic of Fanny's solitude, or of her growing independence, or of the contemplative life of a nun, or a simulacrum of Empire, colonized by Fanny, I will leave to others. But I think analysis of the East room might start with the basic facts I've mentioned here.
| Austen's description of the East room: Mansfield Park, Chapter 16, excerpt: "The little white attic, which had continued her sleeping-room ever since her first entering the family, proving incompetent to suggest any reply, she had recourse, as soon as she was dressed, to another apartment more spacious and more meet for walking about in and thinking, and of which she had now for some time been almost equally mistress. It had been their school-room; so called till the Miss Bertrams would not allow it to be called so any longer, and inhabited as such to a later period. There Miss Lee had lived, and there they had read and written, and talked and laughed, till within the last three years, when she had quitted them. The room had then become useless, and for some time was quite deserted, except by Fanny, when she visited her plants, or wanted one of the books, which she was still glad to keep there, from the deficiency of space and accommodation in her little chamber above: but gradually, as her value for the comforts of it increased, she had added to her possessions, and spent more of her time there; and having nothing to oppose her, had so naturally and so artlessly worked herself into it, that it was now generally admitted to be hers. The East room, as it had been called ever since Maria Bertram was sixteen, was now considered Fanny’s, almost as decidedly as the white attic: the smallness of the one making the use of the other so evidently reasonable that the Miss Bertrams, with every superiority in their own apartments which their own sense of superiority could demand, were entirely approving it; and Mrs. Norris, having stipulated for there never being a fire in it on Fanny’s account, was tolerably resigned to her having the use of what nobody else wanted, though the terms in which she sometimes spoke of the indulgence seemed to imply that it was the best room in the house. "The aspect was so favourable that even without a fire it was habitable in many an early spring and late autumn morning to such a willing mind as Fanny’s; and while there was a gleam of sunshine she hoped not to be driven from it entirely, even when winter came. The comfort of it in her hours of leisure was extreme. She could go there after anything unpleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some pursuit, or some train of thought at hand. Her plants, her books—of which she had been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling—her writing-desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were all within her reach; or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing would do, she could scarcely see an object in that room which had not an interesting remembrance connected with it. Everything was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend... | Sidebar: Since MIss Lee had "lived" in the East room, this implies that her bedroom was attached to it. So here's another thought—it ought to have occurred even to Lady Bertram that Fanny could move to Miss Lee’s bedroom, once the former governess was let go. The governess’s bedroom was very often placed next to the school-room. But wherever Miss Lee's bedroom was, it would have been a nicer room than any rooms assigned to the lower servants.  Well-lit, airy class room Or, once Maria is married and Julia is away for an extended period, Fanny could have moved to one of their bedrooms! But no, Fanny still uses the little white attic. She gets dressed ("makes her toilet") there, as we know from the description of her preparations for the ball. In that respect, I disagree with the academic who thinks Fanny has turned the East room into her own "dressing room." She does not dress or undress there, and so she can receive gentlemen in the East room. |
"The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia’s work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast... and as she looked around her, the claims of her cousins to being obliged were strengthened by the sight of present upon present that she had received from them. The table between the windows was covered with work-boxes and netting-boxes which had been given her at different times, principally by Tom; and she grew bewildered as to the amount of the debt which all these kind remembrances produced."
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 | In my Mansfield Trilogy, Fanny Price runs away from Mansfield Park instead of nursing her sorrows in the East room. She becomes a governess for a family living near Bristol, and soon meets a young abolitionist. Her bedroom in her new home is nicer than the little white attic, though still modest. Click here for more about my novels. |
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